Finding Myself
by Crazy Authoresses CAT and AMS
Summary: When Nita is determined missing during an assignment, everyone loses hope but Kit who realizes just how much Nita meant to him. Meanwhile, Nita must rediscover herself after she wakes up with no memory of the past two years. KN fluffangst ahead!
1. Chapter 1

Finding Myself

A/N- This story started in a kinda weird way, but I think it might be interesting... I know that amnesia seems like the plot device of choice of most corny soap operas, but bear with me! K/N fluffiness will abound! Gah! My first attempt at a serious fic! Run while you can!

_ My name is Nita Callahan, or at least, that's what I remember. The only thing I remember. It's been 37 days since I was checked in, or so the doctors say. They say I've recovered physically almost completely, but they don't know what caused the accident or who I am. And neither do I. I don't remember a single thing about my life until a month ago, but I do know that it was... important, somehow. And I know that I'm not normal. I've never told the doctors because they'd just keep me in longer, but... I can hear a voice in my head sometimes. I can't respond to it, but it's there, a nagging reminder of my past that will never let me rest until I uncover it._

The door opened, letting in a suffusion of fluorescent light into the dimly-lit room that was decorated in the one color that all hospitals in the universes use: that sickly pale green. The auburn-haired girl sitting cross-legged on the hospital bed started and shoved her notebook under her pillow as quickly as she could, and a mere second later the orderly, a fair-haired young man with quick bright eyes and an intelligent face, entered.

"Shouldn't you be more careful when you write in that, Nita?" he said with a smile, motioning under the pillow, "You know, I risked the wrath of Dr. "Hack" to give you that."

His eyes glinted with mischief, as they always did when referring to the doctor that had been assigned with her care, who had claimed that keeping a log would be too strenuous for the newly-recovered girl, mostly out of his own laziness.

"Oh, come on, Skot'irith... this is the only thing keeping me from dying of boredom in here." She grinned back, "You wouldn't deprive me of it, would you?"

"Of course not. Any improvement?"

The question settle heavily in the air between them, and Nita began to fidget.

"I'm sorry for asking... I just thought that maybe you had--" He began, looking abashed.

Nita couldn't help but thinking that he looked awfully cute like that, but something didn't seem quite right as it flicked through her head, as if she only thought it was cute because it reminded her of someone else.

"Skot...I heard him again last night." she sighed.

She had been hearing an odd voice quite often since she woke up, and at first she had been worried for her sanity, but after she recovered from the shock, his voice comforted her in an odd way.

"Don't worry. It's probably your memory trying to recover. Don't shut it out."

The seriousness he took when discussing it always comforted her, but was also confusing. And even if he was the kindest person she had met since she'd been admitted to the hospital by the nameless good Samaritan that had found her passed out in a small residential neighborhood, what nurse in their right mind would encourage a person to listen to the voices in their head?

"Until tomorrow, Aurora." He said, using his nickname for her.

"Are you ever going to tell me what that means?" She sighed in exasperation.

He turned to leave, but she could see a small smile spread across his face.

"You can figure it out on your own. You have a good memory buried somewhere in that head... it just needs something to bring it out."

The next day, a cheerful-looking doctor with graying hair peered in at her, followed by Skot, who was wearing nervous expression. His nervousness and the scavenger-like smile of the doctor beside him made Nita feel her stomach plummet in apprehension. Today was not going to be a good day.

"Good morning, Miss Callahan. Up and about already today, I see. A good sign." The man said with a smile that seemed cheerful for all the wrong reasons.

"Err... thanks Doctor Hachk, I guess." Nita returned uncertainly, still unsettled.

"You know, today's a very important day for you."

"Why's that?" She asked, feeling the apprehension grow.

"Well, a panel of us doctors have discussed your condition, and it seems to us that given your physical recovery, we will be able to discharge you from the hospital. However... given your… err-- _problem_, we have deemed it unsafe to send you out into the world alone. The dilemma had us stumped for a while, but Skot'irith here has offered to put you up until you feel safe enough to... carry on alone with life as usual. In other words, you're free to go. Er... that is, after you resolve your bill." He finished with a slight smirk.

_'A bill???? They expected me to pay a bill when I have no identity but a name? When I'm not even from this Power-forsaken back-water planet? When I... wait.. NOT FROM THIS PLANET? What kind of drugs have they been giving me: first voices, now this..?' _

The outrage must have registered on her face, for the doctor (who she was growing to despise more and more each minute) spoke up yet again interrupting her train of thought and leaving her scowling.

"Of course, we can set up a nice payment plan, over-- oh say, eight sunorbits."

Any thoughts of her planet of origin dissipated and outrage took over yet again, this time verbally.

"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, CHARGING A POOR PATIENT WITH AMNESIA A BILL FOR BEING ADMITTED WITHOUT KNOWING??? AND A BILL THAT WILL TAKE EIGHT YEARS TO PAY OFF, AT THAT! WHAT KIND OF CROOKS ARE YOU PEOPLE TO THINK THAT YOU CAN CHARGE THAT MUCH FOR A BED AND HORRIBLE FOOD??? I WILL NOT PAY. I. HAVE. NOTHING, GOT IT???" She raged, ignoring Skot'irith making a cut-it-out sign from behind the doctor.

"You can't expect us to give treatment for nothing. Go to the front desk to sort out your _payment_ before I decide that you should be checked into the psych ward for such violent behavior." he said, all semblance of cheerfulness evaporated.

Skot'irith led her out and they took a copy of the payment arrangement, which made Nita pale considerably.

"They expect me to pay thirty thousand Ulings a month???" she muttered in his car, scanning the bill, "Wait a second... what's a Uling, anyways?"

"Don't worry about it."

"Why are you helping me like this?" Nita demanded, "What could you possibly get out of it?"

"The satisfaction of helping another, maybe? We're here." His car had stopped, and it was just then that it struck Nita odd that he hadn't been driving the car while he'd been talking.

"Err.. Skot? I had the oddest thought in the hospital-- I t-t-thought I was from another--" she wavered, and was surprised from the fierceness of his reply.

"I know. I'll talk about it when we get in the house. Not a word until then. Understand?"

She nodded silently, puzzled and frightened by his shift in behavior. They climbed stairs in what would have seemed to be a normal apartment building had the stairs not been made out of cubes that moved on their own and stacked on one another to create a stairway on what seemed to be telepathic whim. She tread on each step with such apprehension that anyone watching would have thought that she feared the stairs jumping out from under her and attacking. And they would have been partially correct. There was a pit stretching upwards and downwards where a normal staircase should have been with stories of landings lining it. And Nita was trying as hard as she could not to look down to see just how far it went or think about what would happen if one of the stairs decided to move from under her.

_What if they're timed?_ Her tiny voice of panic said at the back of her head, which goaded her to rush up the stairs to a smirking Skot's landing.

"Was that magic?" she murmured, and a tiny pinprick of memory came and faded in an instant as she said the word.

"Don't say another word about that until we get in the house." He demanded, peering around to make sure no one had overheard them.

Finally, he pressed his hand to the door, and a tiny keypad appeared, on which he typed a succession of several numbers, and the door opened gently. He closed the door tightly behind him and muttered a few word under his breath, then turned to smile at Nita, who appeared thoroughly creeped-out.

"I'm definitely not from this planet." She muttered disbelievingly.

"Right you are. But don't go around telling everyone. We're lucky you didn't at the hospital. Not all of the people here are as understanding as I am." The sparkle came back to his eyes, and he motioned for her to sit down in a cushy-looking armchair as he exited the room into what seemed to be an office. She took a seat, and it shifted under her to mold to her body, making her jump.

"You could have warned me about some of this, you know! Or do you enjoy seeing me get scared out of my wits?" She glared as he chuckled, reemerging with a book.

"A little, I admit. Damn, this thing stings..." He said, juggling it from hand to hand with a wince before throwing it onto what appeared to be a coffee table.

"What is it? It looks like a normal book to me."

"They found it with you. And it's a good thing that I was working night-shift that day, too. People are kind of skittish around magic here. If I hadn't taken it... there would have been trouble."

"But what about the stairs and the door and the car? Weren't they magic?"

He smirked rather bitterly and grimaced.

"No. Most of that is technology. Magic, however, is imaginary in the eyes of most, even though it's what this world's kernel is held together with. Close-minded fools..."

The word kernel had shocked her brain with a wave of sadness that she couldn't explain. She knew about kernels somewhere in the recesses of her mind. It just wasn't accessible... Nita mulled over what he had just said, tracing a figure eight wizard's knot onto the arm of the chair unconsciously.

"Still... me? Having magic? You've gotta be kidding."

The book grabbed her attention insistently, making her stroke the spine while Skot looked on with a smile.

"But-- is that mine?" She said, frowning slightly as she picked it up: the cover seemed to be fizzing slightly.

"Yup. Dai, cousin. Open it."

He smiled, but there seemed to be sadness hidden behind it this time.

She jolted at the word, but she opened it at random to a section that filled eight pages with flashing red messages marked urgent. The rest, however, was indecipherable.

"That's everyone that cares about you, Nita."

And with that, the tears that had been welling up in her eyes began to fall.

"...So this is why you've been helping me so much, isn't it? You're a wizard too, aren't you?"

"Yes, but I also helped someone who reminded me very much of you before. I think I can help you."

Overwhelmed by his kindness and at emotion in general, she could only manage a weak thank you before the tears began again.

Kit, meanwhile, had just finished mindlessly feeding Ponch and was hunched over the kitchen table quietly in front of a bowl of soggy untouched cornflakes.

_Are you ready to go again, Ponch? _He thought listlessly at the dog, who cocked his head and whimpered.

_This isn't a good thing. This way isn't real._

"I don't care if it isn't real. This I the only way I can see her."

_That doesn't mean that it's right. _the dog whined, nosing his master, who ignored him completely and buried his head in his arms.

Before he had time to tell the dog off, a manicured hand whacked him upside the head and Carmela frowned at him.

"Christopher…" She began, an immediate bad sign. No one called him Christopher unless they really wanted him to listen.

"You've been moping around for over a month. I'm sorry to be the one to say it, but Nita's gone, Kit."

Kit looked at his sister in utter betrayal and began to shout a response, but even that seemed to take too much emotion. Since she'd gone missing, Kit found that he rarely cared about anything. His only comfort was the alternate universe Ponch would sometimes create of the times before: the only place that he could see Nita's face and tell her not to go, tell her how he felt. But even that carried the nagging reminder that this wasn't the real Nita, that this Nita too would soon disappear. And each time he lost her, it felt just as painful as the first. The odd thing was that he knew she was gone, even if 'Mela didn't think he did. He was there when it happened. And yet he didn't let a day go by without trying to contact her through mindspeak or the manual. Letting go just seemed too final, and if he let himself think of Nita as permanently gone, he couldn't bear it. Yes, he'd thought of forcing out his wizardry, returning to ignorant bliss, where he could spend the rest of his high school years living normally, but each time he considered it, his mind was forced back to Nita. If the universe's entropy rate sped up, he might just be doing the same thing to someone else's partner that happened to his. Entropy was the root of the problem, and he wasn't about to help it after it. Even in this state, he knew better than to trust the servant of the Lone Power.

"I'm sorry, sis, but I just can't give up."

And with that, he led Ponch out the door to lose Nita one more time.

A/N- Hmmm… I don't know if I like this or not… Kinda sappy for my normal style, ya know? Well, review and tell me! Don't worry, it will get a tad less serious, I think, if I chose to go on with it. Next chapter: an intergalactic wild goose chase and some explanations! Now go play with the periwinkle box!

A/N- Woah, this is weird... I'm writing my first attempt at drama at the same time as I'm re-writing a Harry Potter humor fic... Talk about two very different things...


	2. Chapter 2

Finding Myself

Chapter 2

A/N- Well, I'm back again after quite a long hiatus. Isn't it amazing? Well, I hope that as a reward I get lots of reviews! –sigh- I've missed this section. Beware: this is my angst-venting story, unlike all my others, so know it's a bit out of my norm to be writing this style. I'm a bit rusty, so be nice. ;P Also, know that since I finished WaW, I've had the uncontrollable urge to use my find option to replace all the Kits in the story with Dairines and all the Nitas with Roshaun. XD I can't help myself…

Carmela retreated back up to her room, feeling the horrible pang of emptiness that always seemed to emanate from Kit since Nita had gone. She knew that it had been a cruel thing to say. Kit couldn't take someone telling him that his best friend and partner had died. It was just that she had wanted him to respond somehow, to lash out at her. At least then he'd be showing some emotion. It hadn't worked, though. He'd retreated, just as he always did now. This cold, hopelessness was more than she could bear from her formerly cheery brother. It was almost understandable, though. He'd lost most everything especially dear to him in the last few weeks; first Nita, then his magic and with it any possibility of saving Nita. That is, assuming she was still alive, an impossible chance at best. Still, that miniscule probability had become the only thing keeping him going and the obsession over it soon took him over. Over the weeks, Carmela had sensed from a distance the growing desperation that was consuming her brother. Before long, she knew he'd do something dangerously rash, like trying to find her. And that something that would probably kill him.

'And I can't allow my little brother to do that to himself.' she vowed to herself.

It was, in a way, odd to be feeling this protective toward Kit again. When he was younger, she'd always felt like his defender. When the older kids had picked on him because of his accent or intelligence, she had rarely failed to come to his rescue. She hadn't been afraid to let his tormenters know that she could easily make them suffer just as much as they had her brother. After all, making friends had never been a problem for her, and in high school, just like in the real world, influential friends can sway anyone to your opinion. However, suddenly around the time he hit twelve, just when the teasing was getting even out of her control, Kit had met Nita, and together they formed a partnership that seemed to deflect any cruelness anyone tried to throw at them. From that time forward, though she hadn't known why, it almost began to feel that he had gained the power to protect her in a way significantly more important than she had for him. It simultaneously had delighted Carmela and made her feel useless. Her role had been played out, but her brother was happy, and that was what she'd wanted all along. It wasn't until later that she had learned about his wizardry.

For a while she'd been jealous, even angry that she hadn't been the one chosen, but as she saw what he'd had to face as a part of the reception of his power, she saw just how much he'd grown and it awed her. The responsibility he'd carried with Nita was enough to crush a normal person, but he had wielded it with a bashful grace. Until the day he'd lost Nita, that is. He'd tried desperately for days to cast various tracking spells, but without her, he didn't have enough power to get her back It had abandoned him, and now the thing that had once been his savior had sent him spiraling into a deeper depression than he'd ever faced. And Carmela had finally regained her role to her brother again. She wouldn't let him throw his life away after all he'd done for her and the planet.

She wasn't sure how, but she was going to do everything in her power to help him return to who he once was, and that began with gaining enough power to do so. Without giving the matter any more thought, she headed straight for the living room to begin researching.

Meanwhile, Kit wiped the last of the dampness from his eyes as he approached the high shrubs that blocked the neighbors from looking into the yard of the two area seniors. He'd sent Ponch home after the last time he'd gone back to the alternate universe that still contained Nita. When Ponch had run out of strength to maintain the illusion and he had lost her again, he realized that he had to take matters into his own hands. It was then that he decided that he had to come here. He stalked up the well-manicured lawn with both fists clenched in determination. They'd undoubtedly try to stop him, but nothing could dissuade him. If she was still alive- and he somehow knew she was- then the people that were supposed to look after her safety, her partner and her Seniors, should be doing so. With a final nod of resolution, he walked up to the door of the large house and pounded on the door. From within, he could hear the muffled barks of their two dogs and for a moment everything seemed normal. Perhaps he'd been imagining it all. Maybe he'd go in and Nita would be there, waiting for him so that Tom and Carl could give them the précis of their next mission together. Maybe Nita's disappearance had only been a waking dream, a dark vision from the Lone Power that had nestled itself into the corners of his soul where his deepest fear resided…

But he knew it wasn't, especially when Tom came to the door and winced barely perceptibly.

"…Dai, Kit. We've been expecting you to come and pay us a visit. Come on in, and excuse the mess." Tom said softly, guiding Kit through the door and closing it behind him, "Carl's been trying to build a bookshelf that can hold both of our manuals without breaking. Personally, I say it's a physical impossibility."

The undertone of good-natured humor had begun to seep back into Tom's voice after the initial shock of Kit showing up unexpectedly. He motioned to the only kitchen chair that wasn't being occupied by a strange combination of crude carpenter's sketches and, in the more elegant curlicue calligraphy of the Speech, Senior's notices. At any rate, he seemed out of place despite Tom's careful assurances of welcome.

"Go ahead and sit down; I'll go get Carl. Want anything to drink while you're waiting?"

"No. I'm fine." Kit murmured coldly, wondering if any of the impersonal Senior notices that tended to blink urgently every once in a while had to do with Nita.

"Really?" Tom said, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Kit merely ignored him and continued looking at the notices until he realized what had made him feel uninvited. Even though he could make out a few words, most of the notices looked like they were written in nothing but meaningless scribbles. He'd begun to lose his grasp on the Speech. How much longer would it be before it was all wrenched out of his hands?

Power doesn't live in the heart of the unwilling… 

And at that moment, he realized he'd find no help in talking to the two Seniors. They wouldn't understand or really be able to help. They'd just muster up some sympathy for his plight, say they'd done all they could to find her, and maybe subtly suggest that he should start to move on. Just like everyone else had with all of their generic sympathy cards they'd bought from the Hallmark Gold selection for $3.50. Anyways, he was no longer one of their charges; he hadn't been since he's begun to lose their common tie, magic. He silently got up and slipped out the door before Tom could return.

'_Nita' _he began, speaking to the invisible, inaudible presence that had haunted him since she'd gone, _'I was never strong enough to protect you. I'm sorry I've failed you again. But know wherever you are, I'll never forget you, even when the magic leaves me completely…_'

He glanced around surreptitiously and headed back down the street, mostly unaware that Tom was watching him from his bay window. Once Kit was out of sight, he beckoned something with two fingers and his manual came gliding through the air, landing delicately in front of him. It obediently flipped to the contact he'd had in mind, and presented a blank message screen, which Tom filled in quickly with a short message.

Dairine… we need you to keep an eye on Kit. Now more than ever he may be susceptible to being overshadowed, and I know none of us want to go through that in addition to the misfortune that has just befallen us. Thanks.

_Yours,_

_Tom._

Carmela blinked drearily after all the time she'd spent staring at the TV screen. Still, her research had paid off. There was one way to help Kit; something she'd never dream of doing unless she was certain it'd help him. She perused the last page of the introduction and had the entertainment center send it to the printer so she wouldn't forget or lose it. The TV's configuration changed each day and she couldn't count on it being there again tomorrow, and after all the chatting, designer chocolate bars, thorough investigations, and finally success, she wasn't prepared to go through it again. Just as she grabbed the pages from the printer, the creak of the screen door on its hinges and the subsequent crash as it flung itself into the doorframe heralded Kit's return. She took the stairs up to her room as quietly as she could taking them two at a time and stashed her find under her bed, where no one dared to look. One thing was certain: she couldn't let Kit know about her day's work. Putting on a careful semblance of non-chalantness, she flounced down the stairs to greet her brother.

A/N- Uh oh… cliffhangeriness! Sort of. Well, anyways, review and the innocent periwinkle box doesn't get attacked by a sudden wave of angst from yours truly. If I have any left in me to attack it with. Ah, the melodrama of a YW soap-opera… All the story needs is some catty older actresses with more botox in their faces than muscle and some catty younger actresses with more silicon in their blouses than… well, you get the picture. Remember, if you don't review, I throw the poor periwinkle box to the pit o' underfed actresses, and they can be mighty vicious when they smell meat.

Much love,

CAT


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